Predictably insecure electronic locks

A couple of researchers recently presented their analysis of a dozen or so consumer electronic locks. Some of these locks are the kind that you’d use on a typical door in place of a deadbolt, and some of them work like padlocks. Most of them use bluetooth for wireless operation: you purchase the lock, install an app on your phone, and then use your phone to lock and unlock the device.

Sounds great, right? That’s fewer keys in your purse or pocket or in that not-very-fake-looking rock on your porch. You can enable a temporary code that you send to your plumber, so that he can enter the house while you’re at work. Some devices even have access logs. (Did the plumber come when he said he would? How long did he stay?)

The researchers found that 75% of the devices they studied were vulnerable to different kinds of attacks. In many or most cases, these attacks involved capturing and analyzing the traffic between the smart phone and the lock. The researchers notified the vendors of the affected products, but none of them was interested in doing anything about it. And why would they? At the very best, it would mean an expensive and embarrassing public relations campaign to notify consumers that they had purchased a lock with a defect.

This offers a plausible way for your character to do some breaking-and-entering. Maybe she needs to enter the home or storage building of a gadget-lover. She might need to plant some kind of sniffer device near the lock she wants to defeat and leave it there long enough for someone to use the lock. The FTS4BT bluetooth protocol analyzer and packet sniffer looks like a USB device that she could plug in to a Raspberry Pi. Tricking the lock might be as simple as replaying the signal that the sniffer recorded. If the devices doesn’t have access logs (or if the owner doesn’t bother looking at them), your character could come and go as she pleases from then on.

Oh, and don’t use electronic locks in real life. There’s a reason people have used metal keys to secure their stuff for hundreds of years.